5 Content Marketing Tips for Solopreneurs

Building a business by yourself is tough, isn’t it? It’s not easy to get customers. This is especially true if you do a lot of business online.

Online marketing is a huge challenge for many solopreneurs. You try to design an attractive website. You work on writing your web copy. You may have even dabbled in blogging.

But it’s not working. You aren’t getting any traffic. There’s nobody subscribing to your website.

The success of most solopreneurs depends on their ability to market effectively.

In this day and age, it would be silly for any solopreneur to ignore the power of content marketing. These kinds of marketing techniques allow you to attract customers in a way that builds credibility, authority and trust.

Content marketing is a solid way to find highly targeted leads even if you don’t have a huge marketing budget. It’s a great way to increase your influence by providing great value to your audience. When you continually provide valuable content to you readers, they will want to reciprocate. This means they will be far more likely to buy from you.

However, just like any other kind of marketing technique, it has to be done right. You can’t just throw a website up with any old type of content and expect people to be eager to read it. Quite the contrary, you will usually have to try harder to get people to pay any attention to you, since they are bombarded with free information all the time. It is your job to stand out from the cacophony of content.

To that end, here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re using content marketing as a strategy:

Marketing a One Person Business Using Content

Tip #1: Don’t Create Lousy Content

This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. You need to make sure that each piece of content that you create is of the highest quality possible. Creating high-quality content takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it in the end.

You can have tons of information, but if it’s unreadable or inaccurate, few people will share it, and the whole point of content marketing is to get people to spread your material around as much as possible.

Think of your content as a spore that will grow into new prospects when it falls on the fertile ground of your niche. That was rather poetic, wasn’t it?

But it’s true. If your material is high quality, your audience will continue to grow.

Tip #2: Make it Easy for Prospects to Find You

There’s no point in creating great content if nobody sees it, right? That’s why it’s important to focus on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

You should write for people before you write for search engines, of course, but you can’t ignore the power of search engines. Search engines are the main way that consumers find the products and services they purchase. That’s why you can’t afford to neglect search engine optimization.

There are many ways to get your website to rank higher in search engines. You need to find the techniques that are best for your company.

Tip #3: Social Media is Your Friend

Another thing that can influence SEO these days is social sharing. You need to make sure that your material is getting shared on social media. Everyone is using social media nowadays, so it would be foolish to ignore it.

One of the best ways to get people’s attention is to simply show up where they hang out. Of course, you need to find out what social media platforms are best for your business. You want to make sure you’re actually posting on a platform that your prospective customers are using.

Top #4: Don’t Be Afraid to Outsource

Now, you might be thinking: “Sure, content marketing is great and I should definitely do it, but who has time to make all of that material?” This is a valid question, especially when the content you need falls outside of your specialization. If this is the case, you might consider outsourcing some of your content creation.

For example, let’s say you need articles on your website, but you’re not a writer. It would probably take you longer than a professional writer to write up the kind of ideas that you want to express, and you may not be able to express them as well. This could be a waste of time because you could be using your talents for other things. In this case, it may be better to outsource.

Now, if you like having a lot of control, you don’t have to outsource everything. To go back to the example above, you could just write article outlines and have a writer fill in the blanks. If you are making video content, you could shoot the content yourself and hire an editor to make sure the raw footage is fit for consumption.

No matter what, though, don’t fall into that trap of thinking that you’ll “save money” by doing everything yourself. You know what? Time is money, and if you are using your time inefficiently — working on a task you dislike or that you’re not that great at doing, instead of working from your strengths — then you are wasting money. Many new entrepreneurs, in their zeal to save every last bit of capital, make this mistake.

Tip #5: Use the Right Tools

There are plenty of useful tools out there that can help you turn your website into a lead generating machine. The key is to find the right tools for your type of business. These tools are designed to make it easier for you to accomplish your content marketing goals.

After all, what’s the point of having great content if you’re not selling anything?

There are many tools you can use to get more people to buy your products. There are also more comprehensive lists of tools that can help enhance your content marketing.

Conclusion

Growing a successful business means earning the trust of your prospective clients. You have to build influence with them as much as possible.

Content marketing works because you are providing value to your audience without expecting anything in return. When your prospects look to you as a source of valuable information, it increases the chances that they will buy from you. You may not see dramatic results at first, but if you keep at it, you’ll discover how powerful content marketing can be.